A tiltable cart for compacting fanfolded business forms by causing them to stand on edge is described and illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,061,233, of common assignee herewith, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. In that patent, there is disclosed a tiltable cart having a movable forms backstop extending upwardly from a main surface of the cart against which forms, received from a folding machine, are compacted. The cart includes a plurality of belts movable along the main surface and engaging the lower edges of the forms such that the forms may be compacted against the backstop. As the forms are driven onto the cart, the backstop is also driven in a direction away from a delivery table coupled to the form folding machine to drive the belts along the main surface of the cart whereby the forms are compacted and disposed on the cart main surface on edge. When the cart is full of the forms, the last form is detached from forms on the delivery table and the cart may be wheeled to another location and disposed in operative association with another forms utilization device.
For certain forms utilization devices, the cart body is tilted on end or at a predetermined angle relative to its base so that the folded forms do not curl at their edges and also to facilitate their withdrawal from the cart. It will be appreciated that the cart when filled with business forms is fairly heavy and, as pointed out in U.S. Pat. No. 5,061,233, hydraulic shock absorbers are provided to damp movement of the cart body.
The cart as disclosed in the above-discussed patent is maintained in a tilted position by a detent mechanism, including a locking plate carried by the cart body having a plurality of holes, a detent shaft having a knob at its outer end, and a spring mechanism for spring-loading the shaft. Thus, the shaft is biased into contact with the plate so that the shaft will enter one of the holes in the plate and hence maintain the cart body in a predetermined tilted position. It has been discovered, however, that it remains relatively difficult to manipulate the cart body, i.e., to tilt the cart body when loaded with business forms, while simultaneously maintaining the spring-biased shaft out of locked position with the openings in the locking plate. That is, the knob 82 must be pulled and held out of position in order to tilt the cart into the desired position. Because the operator has only a single hand to manipulate the cart, the operator may lose control of the cart body due to the weight of the forms in the cart, while attempting to both tilt the cart body and maintain the knob out of contact with the locking plate.